Some very bright comets may also have an
ion tail, oriented at a slight angle to the dust tail and bluish in colour.
There is a dust tail and
ion tail with ionized particles which comes from the comet itself.
As comet C/2012 K1 PanSTARRS neared its peak brightness this past September, it sported the lumpy bluish
ion tail of gas streaming off to the right in this photo, while its diffuse dust tail curved off towards the left.
STICKY SI KY SIK TUAT ATA
ION Tail on Flybe plane like this one was fixed up with adhesive
A member of the observation team said that Subaru Telescope offers a rare combination of large telescope aperture and a wide-field camera adding that this enabled them to capture a detailed look at the nucleus while also photogenically framing inner portions of Comet Lovejoy's impressive
ion tail. ( ANI )
Periodic comet 2P/ Encke was on its 62nd observed return, showed its usual diffuse coma and narrow
ion tail and had a similar faint absolute magnitude to that seen over the last half-century.
An examination of the images however indicates the presence of a bright
ion tail, but the absence of a bright dust tail.
The other tail, called an
ion tail, is much dimmer.
But last April, just after the comet slipped inside Mercury's orbit, magnetic hurricanes belching from the sun chopped off its
ion tail. Spacecraft images of the event provide the first clear evidence of such a curtailment.
Charge exchange data shows ion temperatures increasing from 300 to 600 eV and an
ion tail energy of 2 keV with 2nd harmonic heating at 6.7 MHz.
The straight tail - known as the "
ion tail" - is made of gas blown off course by solar winds.
nuclear diameter: 1-40 km (Halley:16 x 8 x 7 km) nuclear mass: 1014-1019g (Halley: 1017-1018g) nuclear mass loss per apparition: ~1 % coma radius: 104-105 km hydrogen cloud radius: 107 km dust tail length: 106-107 km dust tail particle size: 0.1-100 microns dust tail direction: antisolar, becoming curved as dust particles follow independent orbits
ion tail length: 106-108 km
ion tail direction: antisolar short-period comets: period < 200 years long-period comets: period > 200 years comet discovery rate: ~12 per year number of comets discovered to date: ~4 000 average number of apparitions per year: ~17